Resource Scheduling Software

Varicent Software , which sells incentive compensation and sales performance management products, has announced what company officials are calling "an integrated product" with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
The move is characterized by Varicent officials as producing a tool to help sales managers and sales users get a complete view of sales performance, compensation results and key performance indicators and better visibility into inquiries, compensation and plan approvals from a single application.  It's also touted as helping users "manage other incentives, including Management by Objectives," and to "facilitate the development and management of quota plans."

Varicent officials see "business value" in the product arising from users' Microsoft Dynamics CRM being extended to sales performance, and "providing a single product that addresses the needs of various departments across the organization." Working with marketing, finance, sales and human resources, the product provides "alignment between field activities, and corporate strategy."

Brian Hartlen, Vice President Marketing at Varicent, argues that having an integrated CRM and SPM tool will "increase CRM's relevance to sales, motivating increased adoption rates. The sales audience will gain visibility into actual and potential commissions through enhanced sales reporting, analysis, modeling and forecasting available within this unique integrated offering."

Pitney Bowes Business Insight, a vendor of location and communication intelligence offerings, has announced that the Data Quality Connector 5.5 for its Customer Data Quality Platform software is  now validated for integration with Oracle's Siebel CRM 8. 

The Pitney Bowes Business Insight Data Quality Connector software "integrates the company's CDQ Platform software with Siebel CRM" so the data going into the CRM engine is "clean and complete," according to Pitney Bowes officials, by verifying, updating and correcting addresses.

"Validation through Oracle PartnerNetwork Application Integration Architecture for Partners gives customers' confidence that the integration between Data Quality Connector 5.5 software and Siebel CRM 8 has been validated and the products work together as designed," said Mary Arbelaez, senior director, ISV Programs at Oracle, adding that validation through this initiative applies a technical process to review the integrations.

Siebel CRM customers can use the CDQ Platform software's data solutions to "improve marketing practices with more accurate data," Siebel officials say, explaining that the Pitney Bowes software provides "name standardization, geocoding, data cleansing and data matching services in batch and real-time modes within accounts, contacts and prospect records."

Navin Sharma, director of product management for Global Data Quality for Pitney Bowes Business Insight, said the matching algorithm of the Siebel CRM integration provides CDQ Platform software users with more advanced duplicate detection and the flexibility to use corporate data.

The Data Quality Connector software is a server-based product that supports both real-time and batch operations. It uses out-of-the-box data quality integration with Siebel CRM and provides a graphical interface that features data quality functions inside the actual Siebel CRM application.

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CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China's CDC Corporation, has announced that AAA Western and Central New York has selected Pivotal CRM 6.0 for its membership relationship management system that is expected to be used by more than 650 associates at 17 locations throughout upstate New York.

AAA Western and Central New York wants to use the Pivotal product to market the association's products and services to its membership base, "meet its vision of standardizing core business processes across all business units and provide enterprise-wide access of member data to enhance customer service."

When fully implemented, AAA officials say, the product is expected to provide the platform and service-oriented architecture to support AAA Western and Central New York's relationship management, leads and opportunity management, complaint management, marketing campaign management, corporate knowledge management and enterprise reporting.

Tom Chestnut, president/CEO of AAA Western and Central New York, said the organization was looking for a system that offered "advanced integration capabilities with our other systems and significant flexibility to conform to our business processes, and no other system we evaluated did that except Pivotal CRM 6.0." He said they were "impressed" that Pivotal CRM was based on Microsoft.NET technology for integration with Microsoft Office, Visual Studio and SharePoint.

Bruce Cameron, president of CDC Software, said service organizations are "looking for membership relationship management products to help them differentiate their services and build customer loyalty in increasingly competitive markets."

Pivotal CRM 6.0 is based on Microsoft.NET technology with task-based navigation, embedded Microsoft SharePoint and Office applications.

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VisualCube, which sells products and services designed to enhance Infor's CRM, has launched a community Web site for Epiphany users and developers.

"We launched this open and free forum to connect users' wants and needs with developer products, and to give Infor intel," says VisualCube Managing Partner Jason Balliet. "The aim is to augment, not supplant, Infor's existing strategies with the Epiphany product. Since my partner and I helped develop Epiphany from its inception, we've remained interested and involved through its evolution."

Ourepiphany.com offers several areas designed to influence and expedite Epiphany improvements, including a blog set up to give Epiphany CRM users, the implementation community and other stakeholders of any size a forum to share information, advance ideas, and brainstorm possibilities. Members can comment and vote on someone else's ideas, advocate their own for others to evaluate, ask for input and assistance, or suggest ways to improve Epiphany -- either from developer or user perspectives.

The aim is to offer constructive advice and criticism, "versus just complaining or denigrating," site officials say: "Salient information will be made available to Infor Product Management for further consideration and discussion as they deem appropriate."

Due to launch second quarter is a feature called The Store, which will have plug-ins that customers can add to Epiphany with a free plug-in architecture interface, as well as an application cloud designed to enhance Epiphany during initial deployment, and provide post-deployment upgrades and consulting options. There will also be a jobs marketplace to post salient Epiphany-related openings.